Pass the SoLT

I was sent a link to a blog today maintained by the Best Colleges Online which celebrates 'National Distance Learning Week'. I immediately assumed the reference to national meant the United States.

The blog lists 25 facts you should share during National Distance Learning Week. Here is a quick summary of the top 10 facts:

1. Between 2007 and 2008, 20.4% of American undergrads participated in distance education.

2. More female undergrads participate in distance education than male.

3. Most undergraduates taking distance learning courses are white (their term not mine).

4. Twenty-two percent of graduate students took distance learning courses during the 2007-2008 school year.

5. Distance education participation increased by 4% between the 2003-2004 and 2007-2008 school years

6. Distance learning is just as engaging as its classroom counterpart

7. There are disadvantages, of course

8. …distance learning programs lag crazy behind when it comes to accessibility

9. Most DETC (Distance Education Training Council) students are middle-aged adults

10 Master’s degrees are their (DETC) most popular offerings

I'll leave you to explore the remaining 15 DE facts from the website. Each of the so-called facts has a brief explanation along with a hyperlink which takes you to further information, including a link to the National Center for Education Statistics.

The United States Distance Learning Association website states, 'The purpose of National Distance Learning Week is to generate greater awareness and appreciation for distance learning, including K-12, Higher Education, Corporate and Military, while recognizing leaders and best practices in the field'. There is also a link to a series of webinars over the course of the week to discuss different topics related to distance learning.

The idea of a week devoted to distance learning is an interesting concept but I'm not sure how well it would be received by the current government in New Zealand with such a focus on retention and completion rates. Perhaps the Distance Education Association of New Zealand (DEANZ) could try to initiate a similar celebration to help raise the profile of the social, cultural, economic and environmental benefits of distance learning to society at large. I might raise the idea at the next Executive Committee meeting...

This week, once again, a group of staff asked the question: where is the evidence that blended learning works? This is probably the most common question I come across in my work. Unfortunately, it's the wrong question to ask and reflects a naive understanding of the concept of blended learning and the complex nature of technology-enhanced learning environments. I still recall a seminal work from Gavriel Salomon (1990) who claimed by analogy:

"The music we enjoy is not produced by a single flute but rather from the sound of a whole symphonic orchestra" (cited in Brown, 1992).

One of the major flaws in the above question is the assumption that blended learning is a single entity. The use of technology-enhanced learning, or whatever you want to call it, can include courses that use 100% online multi-choice tests, automatically marked, for assessment or heavy participation courses requiring daily or weekly postings to discussion fora.

There is no single form of pedagogy associated with blended learning, which is why asking the question does it work is like asking does face-to-face teaching work? Do we ever ask this question? There are too many covariants and methods of instruction under the umbrella of face-to-face instruction to make this a meaningful question. Yet, people still want to challenge the new ways of teaching with new tools using a gold standard not applied to existing and conventional ways of teaching.

I should quickly add that to my knowledge university staff rarely, if ever, are told they must teach in a certain way. Even if they are required for timetabling reasons to use a lecture theatre, there is no such thing as a standard lecture. In a similar vein, if we think of an online environment as a virtual classroom, we rarely ask whether the physical design of one teaching space (e.g., lecture theatre) is better than another (e.g., tutorial room) because the same space can be used to support different pedagogical approaches.

This is why crude comparative research that tries to compare one way of teaching with another (e.g., f2f with online) has limited validity. Education is always context and teacher-dependent. As Guri-Rosenblit (2009) points out in a recent article in the Journal of Distance Education, 'a classroom lecture might be boring or thought provoking, just as online encounters might be' (p. 119).

This line of discussion does not mean that we can't determine the effectiveness of specific instructional approaches with specific learners in specific contexts. Indeed, this remains an important question. A recent study by Giguere (2009) on the British Columbia Open University demonstrates how we can measure the impact of a specific blended learning or 'course twinning' initiative, over time, using relevant benchmarks. In particular, the study provides strong evidence of the impact on completion rates of a major strategy to virtualise teaching through technology-enhanced learning.

The study found that successful completion rates in online courses follow a clear pattern: they are consistently higher than off-line courses than online ones. More to the point, 'they increase with course level and subject matter classifications, and are particularly large at the upper-level and in more quantitative disciplines (up to 21.2% increase)' (Giguere, 2009). The variations across subject disciplines make interesting reading; after discounting demographic variables, the study concludes that student success online results primarily from the benefits of blended course delivery.

Of course, in social research one should never generalise findings to another educational setting without qualifying or understanding the institutional context. There is an important qualifier in the above study as the author underscores the importance of an integrated online learning environment. Merely supplementing print-based study materials with online delivery and support (an additive model) is unlikely to have the same benefits.

This point returns us to the importance of the pedagogy and the nature of the instructional mix which is wrapped around teaching in a blended learning environment. Put another way, we would be better to ask the question: what is the most appropriate blend of pedagogy and technology to promote high levels of student engagement for specific learners in specific disciplines? The concept of engagement strikes at the core of the learning experience and is centrally linked to retention, completion and the holy grail of improvement gains in student achievement.

In terms of engagement, Diana Laurillard's (1993) seminal book on university teaching and specifically her Conversational Framework provides a useful way of thinking about whether your mix of instructional strategies, learning activities and use of new technologies is designed for learning. While this is a deeper discussion for another day both the talking heads lecture and traditional correspondence model of distance education do not compare well when mapped against this Framework.

We were fortunate to have Diana visit Massey University last year as a keynote speaker where she used the Conversational Framework to discuss the implications of technology-enhanced learning for higher education. The conversations she helped seed are continuing to grow in Massey's thinking about the type of student experiences we want to promote through new technology. I hope to share some of the fruits of our conversations in future contributions this blog.